Reflection In Action And Reflection On Action

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Reflection, what is it?
By David Mulcahy. (14375771)
The Term reflection can have many meanings to many people. Reflection can carry meanings that range from the idea of professionals engaging in solitary introspection to that of engaging in deep meaningful conversations with others. But for this assignment I will focus on; what is refection in the clinical setting, why it is important for health care professionals to reflect and where the ideology of reflection came from. I will also provide a personal experience of reflection during my time in the clinical setting that helped me to come up with a solution to a challenging situation.
WHAT IS REFLECTION? “…the way that we learn from an experience in order to
Understand and develop practice”
(Jasper 2003)
Reflection is a way of going through thoughts and feelings about an incident, or a challenging day and gives us a chance …show more content…

Schön (1991) presented the concept of 'reflection in action' and 'reflection on action'.
“Reflection in action is the process whereby the practitioner recognises a new situation or problem and thinks about it while still acting.” (Burns and Bulman, 2000)
First I will discuss reflection in action. Reflection in action is mostly about experiencing something in the moment, thinking on your feet, thinking about what to do next and acting straight away.For a nursing example of reflection in action you may be attending a ward meeting and contributing fully to what is going on. At the same time, a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ part of your consciousness is able to observe accurately what is going on in the meeting such as body language of nurses and how they communicate with one another. Reflection-in-action is something that can be developed with practice.
“Reflection on action is the retrospective contemplation of practice undertaken in order to uncover the knowledge used in a particular situation, by analyzing and interpreting the information recalled.” (Burns and Bulman,